People Share The Dangerous Things They Did Without Parental Supervision

When I was a kid, my friends and I would play a game where one person had to jump on the trampoline for a minute while the rest of us shot at them with airsoft pellets from a deck above it and everyone had a turn on the trampoline. I can't believe none of us lost an eye.

Kids really do love to do dangerous things, often with no regard for their own well-being; these people shared the unsafe activities they partook in as kids, and I'm surprised they're alive to tell the tale. Hopefully, your kids aren't doing the same things.

This Is Literally A Death Trap

Children climb a tree to get a better view
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Photo Credit: Graham Denholm / Getty Images // Story Credit: Reddit / Babydontcomeback

"Tree riding. Climb a tree and have your friends cut it down. We would have contests to see who would climb the highest. I won more than once. I cannot fathom how I nor anyone else was not seriously hurt, nevermind killed."

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I Always Was Tempted To Try This...

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Plastic Blue Laundry Basket
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"My friend and I used to ride plastic laundry baskets down the steep wooden staircase of his Victorian home, but don't worry, the 90-degree turn before the last few steps caused the wall to stop us."

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The Classic Tuck And Roll

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A school bus
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Photo Credit: PAUL J. RICHARDS / AFP via Getty Images // Story Credit: Reddit / Sembregall
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"For a little while, it was a middle school fad to throw yourself off buses as they were slowing down and do a roll on the sidewalk. I smacked my midsection on a telephone pole and had bruises for weeks."

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Hay—Don't Do That!

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Bales of hay stacked
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"We used to dig tunnels through the hay that they stored in the barn that would be like 10 meters high in places. The tunnels would regularly collapse and we'd just shrug it off and dig another."

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One Misstep And It Would Have Been R.I.P. Timmy

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old houses with slate roofs in UK
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Photo Credit: Tim Graham / Getty Images // Story Credit: Reddit / jirouisbestgirl_
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"My siblings and I used to play on my grandma's house roof. It was a really old house in need of some serious repairs. The roof slates just fell off on their own sometimes."

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Chemicals Are So Dangerous

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laboratory equipment
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Photo Credit: Kevin Nixon / T3 Magazine / Future via Getty Images // Story Credit: Reddit / rr527
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"We used to play with chemicals in my neighbor's garage—we'd combine all different kinds of chemicals we could find (I would assume lawn care and car chemicals) in her garage into a hole in the cement floor. At least we were smart or lucky enough to keep the garage door open."

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Ma'am, That Is Breaking And Entering!

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View of an open entrance to a house
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Photo Credit: Quick Image / Construction Photography / Avalon / Getty Images // Story Credit: Reddit / magicmoonflower
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"Back in the old days when folks didn't lock doors, my idiot self used to sneak into my neighbors' houses and wander about while they slept. Then I’d get scared and leave. Very dangerous as a six-year-old girl."

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That's Not Toxic Or Dangerous At All!

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boat on colorful oil-spill water
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Photo Credit: Ricardo Funari / Brazil Photos / LightRocket via Getty Images // Story Credit: Reddit / goffstock
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"I grew up on an air force base and back behind the school was an old pond with suspicious rainbow ripples that was surrounded by 50-gallon barrels. We called it the Devil's Claw and spent the entire summer there every year.

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"I looked it up recently and yep, it's a superfund site because it was the jet fuel dump."

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More Like Lawn Dart Russian Roulette

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boy and girl playing lawn darts
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"We used to play with lawn darts, except no one was throwing them at the rings like you're supposed to. Instead, we tossed them straight up in the sky and scattered to avoid getting hit."

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A Cute Touch Of Pyromania

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child with sweater sleeve on fire
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Photo Credit: Yavuz Arslan / ullstein bild via Getty Images // Story Credit: Reddit / liliag23
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"I loved to play with fire. I almost burned down the house when I was like 8; I set a fake plant on fire and ran away. My mom was cooking a room over and put the flames out. When I was in middle school, I burned a hole in the carpet in my room and covered it up with a small pink carpet. Parents never found out until I moved out."

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Multiple Generations Of Messing Around

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urban park lawn with people enjoying the sun
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Photo Credit: Jeffrey Greenberg / Universal Images Group via Getty Images // Story Credit: Reddit / Scientific-Dragon
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"Growing up in the '90s, we basically lived at our local park, and there was a foundation still there from the '60s of an old toilet block which had been blown up... by my dad when he was a kid."

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Just Your Casual Landmine On The Way To School

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Rwandese government soldiers de-mining a road
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"I grew up in Kigali, Rwanda. After the 1994 genocide, there were still land mines all over the place. As kids, we used to play soccer on the street while walking 1.5 km to school and one day the ball fell in the bush. I went for it, but little did I know the stone-like thing under the ball was a notorious landmine—I got the ball and asked an older kid what it was. Ten minutes later, the entire neighborhood was on site talking about how I'd just cheated death."

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Trampolines In General Were So Dangerous

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three girls jumping on a trampoline
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Photo Credit: Toni L. Sandys / The Washington Post via Getty Images // Story Credit: Reddit / Melrob17
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"I used to rollerblade off the roof and onto the trampoline. It hurts just to think about it now. I'm still shocked I never got seriously hurt while doing it."

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They Just Gave Kids Mercury Back In The Day

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A boy conducts an experiment while playing with a chemistry set.
Photo Credit: Lambert / Getty Images // Story Credit: Reddit / RonSwansonsOldMan
Photo Credit: Lambert / Getty Images // Story Credit: Reddit / RonSwansonsOldMan
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"In the '50s and '60s, you could get chemistry sets complete with a vial of mercury and other dangerous chemicals. Man, it was fun playing with that mercury and mixing various chemicals to see what would happen.

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"Next, we'll talk about the wood-burning set and the toy that came with a cauldron to melt metal and pour it into molds to make soldiers and whatnot. All while mom was upstairs fixing dinner."

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Really Thought We Were Phineas And Ferb Back In The Day

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Skateboarders riding towards their homemade ramp
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"I built a 'rollercoaster' track down a steep hill when I was 10. The trial run nearly killed me."

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The number of poorly designed homemade ramps and other inventions I made and used has me seriously questioning how I survived my childhood.

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I Mean, It's Actually A Pretty Effective Way To Scare Bears

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Polo referee's whistles hang unused
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"My cousins and I, from the time we were toddlers, were just sent out into the forest in the morning with nothing but whistles to 'scare the bears.' One time I chased a bear."

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Nothing Like A Cute Little Explosion!

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child holding balloons on strings
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"I used to fill balloons with my dad's oxygen/acetylene torch from work and throw them in bonfires. The explosions were so thunderous we'd have cops riding up and down the block. I can remember doing it one time and flaming debris burning a sand dollar-sized hole in my starter jacket."

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We Really Were Out Here Doing Our Own Stunts

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American daredevil and entertainer Evel Knievel poses for a portrait before a stunt in circa 1976.
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Photo Credit: Michael Ochs Archives / Getty Images // Story Credit: Reddit / bosephjones2006
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"Evel Kneivel'ing my BMX bike off jumps into roads while a friend was supposed to be watching for cars but mostly stood there picking his nose looking at his untied shoelace."

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Why Didn't A Teacher Stop This?

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Rocks and pebbles
Photo Credit: Jim Steinfeldt / Michael Ochs Archives / Getty Images // Story Credit: Reddit / Im_running753
Photo Credit: Jim Steinfeldt / Michael Ochs Archives / Getty Images // Story Credit: Reddit / Im_running753
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"The Great Rock Wars. In grade school, we played this game during recess where we just whipped pebbles at each other. Hard."

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I mean, I'm not surprised that kids tried this, but why didn't someone try to stop it?

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Kids Just Want To See Things Burn

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fire on black background
Photo Credit: Unsplash / Cullan Smith // Story Credit: Reddit / Narcslayer714
Photo Credit: Unsplash / Cullan Smith // Story Credit: Reddit / Narcslayer714
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"My greatest discovery at around 12 years old was finding out brake fluid and chlorine for the pool combust when mixed. Soon, my friends and I were doing all kinds of crazy stuff with the mixture. The best was driving a pipe into the ground a few feet long, and putting the chlorine and brake fluid in there, and watching the dragon fire shoot out the pipe. It's not an immediate reaction, kind of a slow burn till it bursts into a furious hellfire."

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Stranger Danger!

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Teenage girl using laptop computer
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"I used to talk to other random kids on MySpace and go to meet with them in real life. We took trains and busses without our parents' knowledge or approval. It could have ended badly, but everyone was cool and normal."

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This Sounds Like Something Out Of A Video Game

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child going downhill fast on sled
Photo Credit: Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images // Story Credit: Reddit / libra00
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"Every winter, the gravel road I lived on froze over and we would convince the older kid down the street to drag our sled behind his motorbike. The sled would hit rocks and stopped cold on more than one occasion, flinging kids into the rear tire/hot muffler of said motorbike."

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Big Mission Impossible Energy

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child rapelling down side of building
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"One time, we tied my cousin to a bookcase nailed to the wall so he could rappel out the second-story window. Our mom and aunt pulled into the driveway as we were lowering him out the window just above it."

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This Is The First Step To Tetanus Poisoning

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Constructing new timber framed houses
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Photo Credit: Ashley Cooper / Construction Photography / Avalon / Getty Images // Story Credit: Reddit / MamisTea
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"I used to play around in the houses that were being built in my neighborhood and dumpster dive in their big dumpsters full of rusty nails and other hazardous items when I was 7. Fun times."

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Imagine This Dad's Shock At Seeing This

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The exhaust pipes of a parked diesel car
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Photo Credit: Osama Faisal / SOPA Images / LightRocket via Getty Images // Story Credit: Reddit / selector96
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"My brother and I once tried to see who could breathe the exhaust fumes from our father's truck the longest. Our dad stopped us before we could find out though."

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What A Fun Game!

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Worker bees surround a queen
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Photo Credit: Sean Gallup / Getty Images // Story Credit: Reddit / KUMBAFUWEWE
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"When I was a kid in Africa, some killer bees decided to build a hive inside of a street lamp in our neighborhood. All the neighborhood kids would gather around and throw rocks at the street lamp. When you heard the first major bzzzzzz, you took off running like a bat out of hell."

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We Really Were Just Faceplanting On Gravel

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A concrete surfaced playground
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"As fun as it really was, I am still surprised how more of us didn't get seriously injured on old school playground equipment. I'm 29, but I'm old enough to remember when playgrounds were filled with gravel, not wood chips or shredded rubber. It's a good thing small kids are shockingly resilient because I know I face planted on those rocks more times than I can count."

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So Quicksand Was A Real Threat And Not Just Something In Movies

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A Columbia Pictures 1961 movie still of a man drowning in quicksand.
Photo Credit: Getty Images // Story Credit: Reddit / PandaCat22
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"My friend and I got stuck in some quicksand that was the result of the local dam overflowing. Instead of getting out right away, we played in it like pigs in a mudbath, probably for about an hour. Then it actually took us a bunch of tries when we wanted to get out.

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"We got home, covered from head to toe in mud and my friend's mom scolded us because apparently there were pockets of air underneath the quicksand, so people every year were sucked down into them and died. Apparently, they had to have divers come to look for the bodies and many were never found."

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Straight Concussion Fodder

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Coconuts growing on a palm tree
Photo Credit: Tim Graham / Getty Images // Story Credit: Reddit / Omny87
Photo Credit: Tim Graham / Getty Images // Story Credit: Reddit / Omny87
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"Back when my family lived in Panama, my brother and I would play 'coconut bowling.'

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"It was a game we made up where one of us stood on a hill behind our house and rolled coconuts down the hill, while the other stood at the bottom trying to catch them before they rolled into the gutter. However, these coconuts were pretty hefty, and sometimes they'd bounce up in the air a few feet due to their irregular shape and from hitting rocks/bumps in the hill, and could have potentially caused us some serious injury if they ever hit us in the head."

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How Was This Fun?

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staircase in house
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Photo Credit: Alan John Ainsworth / Heritage Images / Getty Images // Story Credit: Reddit / kmn19999
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"I used to play a game called 'jump off the stairs.' I would drag some pillows from my room towards the stairs, and jump from the highest stair I could onto the pillows—sometimes I would miss."